Nalini Jones
The Listener unfolds like a map, leading us with remarkable clarity through landscapes we thought we knew into the wild territories at the heart of any American family. Rachel Basch uncovers such vital truths about parents, children, lovers, friends—all the people we love and tremble for—that you’ll want to put this novel in the hands of everyone you meet and say, Read it now.
Readerly Mag
Basch’s stunning and emotional novel captivates with its deft exploration of the intricate lives of a widowed therapist and his troubled young patient, Noah, with whom he shares surprising connections. Detailed with fully realized characters, surprising twists of plot, The Listener graces us with rich and wonderfully observed moments, revealing the sensitive balancing act of striving and failing in our roles as friends and lovers, parents and children. The vulnerability and depth of these characters are not soon forgotten.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Rachel Basch has delved into emotional terrain few writers dare to delve; The Listener is a deeply imagined story of intimacy and vulnerability, fear and longing. She explores the bonds we hold with those closest to us and how those bonds are both fragile and enduring. This book brings us into a world we are privileged to inhabit, a world we may not want to leave when we get to the end.
Karen Osborn
This is a wise novel, full of unexpected twists and turns that lead straight into the intricate center of the heart. Rachel Basch writes with humor and grace about loss, desire, parenting, the conundrums of self-identity, and the many faces of love. Her finely wrought truths echo long after the book is finished. We need them.
The Washington Post
The central characters carry The Listener. Generations twist and turn, each exposing the others’ fallacies and lies. But it’s in the interactions between them — impassioned youth and the weary-yet-hopeful older folk — that Basch makes magic. Everyone in this novel is trying to carve out meaning and an identity. The characters are paired and compared and refracted until each makes peace. And that’s the beauty of this book: One person’s pain must inform the other. Father teaches daughter. Son teaches mother. The world teaches everyone to listen and be still.
Bustle
Heartbreaking and compelling. A sensitive, absorbing story about the need to be heard and the ability to listen.
Ann Hood
Rachel Basch writes with great insight and a big heart, imbuing her novel with both.
Bonnie Friedman
A riveting, inspiring, keenly smart novel full of brilliant observations about how we become ourselves, how we grow to feel at home both in the world and in our own skin. ‘Wow,’ ‘wow,’ I wrote in the margins. You won’t want it to end.
Booklist
Basch takes on the many challenges inherent in dealing with issues of personal identity. A powerful story about loving yourself as well as others.
Charles Blackstone
The psychology of intimacy (and the intimacy of psychology) is put on the couch and made to reveal its deepest, darkest truths in The Listener. And the result, for the brave reader, is cathartic and life- (and love-) affirming. This is an important, provocative, enthralling novel with heart and soul to spare. Rachel Basch might just have the cure for what ails your literary psyche.
Michele Filgate
The Listener is a sharply observed exploration of identity and sexuality. Rachel Basch’s engrossing novel captures the complexities of human relationships: both with ourselves and others. Fans of Richard Russo will find much to like in this book.
BookPage
Basch is good at plumbing the preoccupations of middle-aged folks and quasi-incestuous New England college towns. The result is not just writing that’s good, but writing that’s brave.
Booklist
Basch takes on the many challenges inherent in dealing with issues of personal identity. A powerful story about loving yourself as well as others.
Kirkus Reviews
2014-12-22
A young man struggling with his gender identity and a middle-aged psychologist connect with one another in Basch's (The Passion of Reverend Nash, 2003, etc.) complex and thoughtful new novel.Malcolm Dowd is a listener, receiving updates on the lives of his patients and gleaning information where he can about his two daughters. When he feels the desire to offer up an anecdote or bit of personal information, he reminds himself "that he got paid as much for what he didn't say as what he did, more maybe." After the tragic death of his wife, he's been plunged into single fatherhood, often withholding information that he believes his daughters are not ready to hear or that he's too frightened to share. Noah, a young patient of Malcolm's, confesses that he relates more to his feminine side, hiding makeup, wigs and women's clothing deep in his closet. The novel alternates between the perspectives of Malcolm and Noah, linking them to one another in deep and sometimes too-coincidental ways that hinge on chance meetings and characters who are overly secretive. While Noah longs to define himself on his own terms, he's also desperate for a father figure, which he tries to find in Malcolm. The feeling is not unrequited, with Malcolm commenting on his own paternal instincts toward this boy he barely knows. Malcolm slowly begins to realize that approaching the world as a psychologist is not enough for his family when he's forced to reveal more about the circumstances surrounding his wife's death to his daughters. While Malcolm's trajectory feels complete, Noah's seems to be an afterthought in a novel that isn't really about him.
